NBA Trade Rumors: Is Nene the Key to New Jersey Nets Landing Dwight Howard?

The New Jersey Nets aren’t going to sit around and wait for Orlando to accept their offer of Brook Lopez and two first-round picks for Dwight Howard and Hedo Turkoglu.

They instead are going to aggressively pursue another big man who is in line for a max-contract in Nene of the Denver Nuggets.

It also wouldn’t cause them to lose their lottery pick from the 2008 draft and blossoming big, Lopez. Adding the Brazilian behemoth would cost just a ton of cash from their new Russian owner, Mikhail Prokhorov and some schmoozing to get him to join the Brooklyn-bound team.

The Nets know they need to make a splash in order to keep Deron Williams happy and convince him to stay with the franchise during their move, otherwise he may leave after the season as a free agent.

Perhaps GM Billy King has something more up his sleeve and is going to work on getting Nene as another bargaining chip to trade to the Magic for Howard.

I don’t think adding the Nuggets center alone is enough to convince Williams to stick around. While he is a very valuable player, he won’t sell tickets or get people excited about the team.

Howard, on the other hand, is a superstar and pairing him with Williams would be perfect as the team packs their bags and heads to New York. It would put butts in the seats and get people talking about them being a championship contender.

The Nets really can’t lose by adding Nene, but they could gain a lot more by signing him and flipping him to Orlando while the ink is still drying on his contract.

If they don’t get a deal for Howard and they sign Nene, the Nets are going to have a solid center that no one really appreciates and a lot of question marks after the season ends.